About a decade ago when programmable shaders were new, NVIDIA identified its first graphics processors that used them under the GeForce 3 series and 4 series with the "Ti" marker (for example, GeForce 4 Ti 4800), to demarcate them from mainstream "MX" series, which lacked them (eg. GeForce 4 MX 440). Exactly a decade later, there are faint indications that NVIDIA is reintroducing the Ti marker. This was found out on close examination of a leaked 266.44 GeForce driver, which recognized an unreleased NVIDIA GPU as GeForce GTX 560 Ti. This baffles us. To begin with, this doesn't seem like a notebook GPU, second, we don't know of anything big in works at NVIDIA. One plausible explanation we can come up with is that NVIDIA is using "Ti" to simply make its GTX 560 SKU "look" presentable on paper, especially since the SKU may face competition from Radeon HD 6950 1 GB the moment it's released.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti is being introduced to restore competitiveness to NVIDIA in the sub-$270 "performance" segment, after it was depleted by AMD's introduction of the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850. With GTX 560 seeming imminent, AMD is preparing two new SKUs, Radeon HD 6950 1GB and HD 6970 1GB, which, coupled with cost-effective board designs, are expected to significantly drive down prices, restoring AMD's competitiveness in the crucial market segment. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti is based on new GF114 silicon, features 384 CUDA, a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface, and core clock speeds of 820 MHz. The new SKU is slated for January 25th.

To be fair, the three GTX460 variants lacked any clear distinction in their naming - there was the 460, the 460 768MB, and the 460SE. Which is best?

A 460 Ti and 460 Mx might go a long way to solve this issue, especially as the first three letters in the current Nvidia naming system seem as far as I can tell to be pointless - there are no two cards with the same number and different letters.

384 CUDA cores and a stock clock speed above 800MHz will be a significant (probably 10% to 15%) jump from a GTX 460 1GB/256-bit. I'll be sure to replace my GTX 460 768MB with one. The more cores, the faster my compiling tasks will be.

About a decade ago when programmable shaders were new, NVIDIA identified its first graphics processors that used them under the GeForce 3 series and 4 series with the "Ti" marker (for example, GeForce 4 Ti 4800), to demarcate them from mainstream "MX" series, which lacked them (eg. GeForce 4 MX 440).

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Actually, there was a GeForce2 Ti, which had no shaders at all! I would welcome the re-introduction of the MX series, however.